


Lull

by sweetmyungsoo



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, M/M, charles has to deal with a lot, erik and charles meet up and cuddle when they're not archenemies, fighting fate, thanks maddie for beta-ing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-03-05
Packaged: 2018-05-24 23:40:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6171362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetmyungsoo/pseuds/sweetmyungsoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because, at the end of the day, Charles and Erik have to step away from the battlefield and take off their respective helmets and return home to each other, tired from playing hero and villain endlessly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lull

**Author's Note:**

> thanks a ton to @attack_on_toast for beta-ing this!

Charles hates the sound of his wheelchair more than anything. He can just barely handle the pity in people’s minds, pass that off as the byproduct of their upbringing and the gently misguided beliefs of humans, but the wheelchair is just too much. It scrapes against the floor while it drains his arms of their strength and makes an ugly noise like a scream ripped halfway from his throat.

It’s  _ Charles’s  _ screaming, the echo of his endless pain, all inside his head. An echo of the day in 1962 he whispered to a world that wouldn’t listen and seemed bleached of color, “I can’t feel my legs.”

So what does Charles do? He goes to Cerebro, gives in to the pull of other mutants, their need to feel less alone and brings them together. He builds armor around his heart slowly, piece by piece, until he’s sure he’s strong again. He becomes Professor Xavier to his students. He leads, and Charles dies a little each time he sees one of them go.

He navigates through the corridors of the house he once hated, the house he’s made a safe haven for others like him. If Charles bumps into a few walls, it’s almost never in the presence of someone else. He finds his old bedroom and locks the door, methodically going through his usual evening routine.

He sets flowers on the table, adjusts Erik’s chair, sets out the chessboard, combs his hair, lights a candle or two if he’s feeling nostalgic, brings out a bottle of scotch, and washes his face. He washes away the weight of every day, the weight of sending his soldiers out into battle to fight the face he never could destroy, and returns a temporarily guiltless man.

By the time he’s done, Erik is already in his chair, sniffing the flowers appreciatively, deciding whether he wants to be black or white this time. The helmet lies, discarded, on the wide, four-poster, golden bed, nothing more than a silly, meaningless spoil of war.

Charles wheels himself back to the board, a small smile on his face as he meets Erik. Erik smiles back, though he too is tired. There are lines around his face, as well as the faint impressions of the helmet, of Magneto.

They play several games, though Charles tries his best not to cheat. Pretty soon they neglect the chessboard in favor of lying in bed together, Charles pressing his face into Erik’s chest, listening to the anxious skip of his heartbeat.

Sometimes they talk but they usually don’t, relying on each other more for warmth and support. Today though, after Erik peppers his temple with promises, he swallows nervously. Charles breathes, feeling a bubble of unanswered questions simmer under the surface of Erik’s beautiful, beautiful mind. “Darling?” he says out loud.

Erik takes a deep breath and Charles is surprised to feel the prick at Erik’s eyes and the salty, bitter tears land on his cheek. “I love you,” he says, all gruff and solemn and Charles nods, knowing everything he cannot say.

Charles reaches for the helmet on his bedside table and passes it wordlessly to Erik, who thinks a particularly clear stream of  _ why must I do this? why do I have to hurt Charles so? what am I? who am I? what if I had never _ —before the helmet muffles everything.

Erik offers him one last tortured expression before he turns his back on Charles and levitates out the tall French doors, across the field they once claimed as theirs, past the satellite that once stood tall and proud, but now seems to hunch over in shame, in the same cowardly fashion as Charles.

Because at the end of the day, Charles and Erik have to step away from the comfort of each other and put on their respective helmets and return regretfully to the battlefield, doomed to play the role of hero and villain endlessly with no end in sight.

Because that is what fate has deemed is in store for them. And they try their best to work around the little boundaries and obstacles to heal their achingly incomplete hearts together with this respite, even though it’s tragically futile in the face of everything else. There will always be Professor X and Magneto, on opposing sides of an argument, a long-standing feud that can never really be resolved without losing the essence of who those people used to be.

Charles turns over in his bed and cries into his pillow, wishing he could take all that he felt in his heart (it was too much) and give it away. Maybe then he’d at least look normal again, and not allow himself the luxury of being so dependent on other people like Hank or Moira or whoever. Charles is surprised at how real the tears feel, that they’re not just a feeling of despair and helplessness invented in the mind, that they’re as real as he wills them to be. The flowers sit on the bedside, a soporific lilt to the way they hang outside of the meaningless glass vase, and Charles shuts his eyes on a world that in the cruelest way forces him to live.

And if Jean and Scott find a sleeping professor the next morning, his bedroom a mess and all the chess pieces scattered across the four corners of the world, they don’t say anything about it and let Professor X be, giving him a couple minutes to adjust the mold of the person he needs to be.

And he returns to a weary and old world, providing life and support and strength to his soldiers—his X-men—to fight the battles he never could, because that is what he does—Professor X moves his pawns and realigns his bishops to build the first line of defense for the school from the prying eyes and scared, selfish ideologies of other lone mutants. He doesn’t mention anything how Magneto is out there, plowing the seeds of their destruction (or maybe, preventing it, who knows?) and offering up derision at the mere mention of Professor Xavier’s foolish hope for a better world.

No, Charles and Erik don’t need to change at all: it’s the world that needs to change. It’s the world that needs to stop pushing them apart and pitting them against each other. It’s the world that needs to realize these two people would much rather a different fate than the one so clearly expected of them.

But until the world is ready for Charles and Erik, he’ll force himself to live and endure everyone’s pain, the way he always does.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!


End file.
